24 Facts About Joseph Biederman

Joseph Biederman was an American academic psychiatrist.

Joseph Biederman was Chief of the Clinical and Research Programs in Pediatric Psychopharmacology and Adult ADHD at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Joseph Biederman's research was and is highly cited: Biederman had a lifetime h-index of 121, which is one of the highest in the field of mental health.

Joseph Biederman attracted controversy and public attention for his role in promoting the diagnosis of childhood bipolar disorder and his financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

In 1995, Biederman was inducted into the CHADD Hall of Fame.

Joseph Biederman was awarded the 2021 World Federation of ADHD Gold Medal Award for lifetime contributions to the field of ADHD.

Joseph Biederman was one of the first to systematically study the co-occurrence of ADHD with mood, anxiety and substance use disorders.

Joseph Biederman's work showed that these disorders were common among ADHD patients.

Joseph Biederman completed the first large scale case-control family studies of ADHD.

Joseph Biederman led studies concluding that a substantial minority of children diagnosed with ADHD actually had pediatric bipolar disorder.

Joseph Biederman's results showed excellent correspondence between the clinical scales of the CBCL and DSM-III-R diagnoses of bipolar disorder.

Joseph Biederman did this in two separate samples: the clinically referred bipolar disorder children described above and a sample 140 ADHD probands and 120 normal controls.

Joseph Biederman subsequently replicated these findings among families of ADHD girls.

Joseph Biederman evaluated the psychiatric, cognitive and functional correlates of ADHD children with and without comorbid bipolar disorder.

Joseph Biederman reasoned that the aggression and conduct disordered behavior of bipolar disorder children might respond to mood stabilization.

Joseph Biederman compared ADHD subgroups with and without conduct and bipolar disorders on psychiatric outcomes at a four-year follow-up, familial psychopathology and psychosocial functioning.

Joseph Biederman found that ADHD children with both disorders had higher familial and personal risk for mood disorders than those with CD only who had a higher personal risk for antisocial personality disorder.

Joseph Biederman first studied a sample of 59 consecutively referred pediatric patients who, at initial intake, satisfied diagnostic criteria for mania on a structured diagnostic interview.

Joseph Biederman concluded that mood stabilizers were frequently used in manic children and their use was associated with significant improvement of manic symptoms while antidepressant, and stimulant medications were not.

In evaluation of the clinical records of pediatrically referred patients with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and comorbid ADHD, Joseph Biederman found that the presence of mania interfered with the improvement of ADHD symptomatology during anti-ADHD pharmacotherapy such that ADHD symptoms were much more likely to improve after mood stabilization.

Joseph Biederman reported that SSRIs were selectively efficacious in the treatment of bipolar depression.

In 2008, Senator Chuck Grassley, undertook an investigation that alleged that Joseph Biederman had violated federal regulations in addition to Harvard Medical School's and Massachusetts General Hospital's research rules by receiving money from the pharmaceutical companies.

Joseph Biederman earned consulting fees of at least $1.6 million over eight years from pharmaceutical companies.

Joseph Biederman said that he was not influenced by the money and that some of his work supported drugs other than Risperdal.